2012 Minnesota Open general discussion

[theMoMA]

First off, I'd like to thank my co-contributors Auroni, Gaurav, and Cody, who all did a great job on the set. I'm glad we were able to put the tournament on another year and I hope everyone enjoyed it.

General discussion goes here.

[Excelsior (smack)]

"Name these two scientists who showed that anyone, even Chris Ray..."
"Name this physicist who suggested the existence of M-theory and showed how anyone, even Chris Ray..."
"This confection, inscribed with the names of the deceased, is also offered on the Day of the Dead, but is more commonly gobbled up by kids. The nearest candy store might still have some, Chris Ray."
"Anyone, even Chris Ray, can prove the general unsolvability of quintics by showing that..."
"Players of Age of Mythology, show Marshall Steinbaum that heraldic beasts are the new tactics by..."
"Name some places that someone from Chicago went the weekend that he wrote this, for 10 points each. Oh, and even if it isn’t, let’s pretend that that person is Marshall Steinbaum."
"Ike is a foreign trader in the Ashanti Empire."
"Bruce has travelled back in time and became a court jester for the Hapsburgs in the late Renaissance."
"A person, let’s call him Bruce, demands the following responses from you regarding tariff law..."

STOP DOING THIS FOR PETE'S SAKE. This isn't even all of them!

[Cody]

Sorry for the paucity of Astronomy & CS vs ES & Math. I contributed slightly to the Editor's Other Sci, but failed to look at the submitted packets beforehand to balance out any distributional discrepancies. By the time I realized this was a problem, it was very late in the process and not much could be done without throwing out perfectly usable questions.

[women, fire and dangerous things]

I enjoyed this tournament a lot, but there was an inordinate amount of econ. It might have been nice to hear at least one linguistics question throughout the day.

[setht]

Andrew, Auroni, Gaurav, and Cody: thanks for your work. I enjoyed the set, which seemed solid.

-Seth

[theMoMA]

I enjoyed this tournament a lot, but there was an inordinate amount of econ. It might have been nice to hear at least one linguistics question throughout the day.

Hmm, that's an unfortunate oversight on my part. I planned to write some in the editor packets, but I ended up going in different directions. And the submitted packets, which mostly had strong submissions in those areas, happened not to include any either. Sorry about that; it obviously wasn't intended, but I should have noticed and made sure to include some linguistics in the set.

[Cheynem]

I enjoyed this tournament, it had a lot of neat ideas and at least within the humanities, I thought difficulty seemed pretty appropriate with the usual slightly variable bonus difficulty issues. I will say that this tournament was a little "quirky" but I think in a good way. It had a number of very neat ideas and while I wouldn't really want to see every tournament/ACF Nationals constructed like it, it was pretty fun and what I think a hard open tournament should be.

I really liked the literature--the tossups on Willy Loman's funeral, the Big Sleep, and Philip Carey were very good in my opinion, with two of those being fine ways to ask about familiar answerlines (with the caveat on making the Loman's funeral answerline a little more expanded).

I didn't like the econ, but I considered this Marshall's Revenge for MO last year and contented myself with knowing he was at least content.

[theMoMA]

I'm actually somewhat interested in the perception that there was a lot of econ in this tournament. The subdistribution breakdown was (roughly):

econ (7): Ramsey bonus, firms, Tobin bonus, utility, saving, Debreu, income effect bonus
anthro (5): Turner, Trobriand/Dobu/Fortune, Captain Cook, Anasazi, Primitive Culture
socio (8): Michels bonus, Spencer bonus, True Believer, Rules of Sociological Method, Souls of Black Folk, Parsons, Civilizing Process bonus, Lazarsfeld
psych (6): Kahneman, Freud/Jaynes/Burkert, satisficing/marshmallows/anchoring, TAT, Lucifer Effect, Cooley bonus
mixed/other (10): achievement gap, tax code, arbitration bonus, globalization bonus, garbology/Potlatch/Cozumel, Gould, Piltdown Man, environmental determinism bonus, cooperatives, water law bonus
theory (2): Camera Lucida, isms bonus,
game theory (1): prisoner's dilemma bonus

Aside from the lack of linguistics, this doesn't strike me as particularly skewed toward or away from any one category, unless you consider the amount of "mixed/other" to be too high.

[Muriel Axon]

I enjoyed this set quite a bit and I'm glad I came. It did seem to run out of steam a bit toward the end, but that might have had as much to do with everyone being tired as with the quality of the questions.

[Important Bird Area]

I thought difficulty seemed pretty appropriate with the usual slightly variable bonus difficulty issues.

I thought this set did a really good job of evening out the bonus difficulty; there were very few bonuses that I thought were "easy/hard/hard" or "easy/hard/IMPOSSIBLE."

[gaurav.kandlikar]

At times, I tried to write on science answers that I thought would not go dead. This resulted in the tossups on DNA sequencing (with high throughput clues, which may have had a somewhat unfortunate cliff at the giveaway), multinucleate cells, the mitochondrial genome, etc. I wonder what people thought of these ideas and their execution?

Also, I was logged on to the IRC chat room for a little bit the night after this tournament, and evidently there was some consensus that I should keep away from editing science for a while. As it happens, I will be working on MUT 2013 and probably not much after that. So, the first comment doesn't really help me much. If anyone who shared that sentiment would care to let me know what I should work on between now and MUT, I'd appreciate it (I'm getting this from Eric in the other thread, but if anyone else wants to chime in that'd be great too).

I'll also apologize for the dearth of CS in this set. At some level, this was a conscious decision: I literally know nothing substantive about CS (the only "programming language" I've used extensively is R), and so I was more comfortable putting definitely non-awful questions in than running the risk of sticking something horrible in. Same goes for astro. For MUT and anything beyond, I plan on avoiding this by play-testing things with people who know things.

[Cheynem]

Generally speaking regarding bonuses, I'd agree, Jeff, I just meant that my science players seemed to suggest that the science bonus "easy parts" seemed harder than the humanities bonuses "easy parts." There were a couple "hmm, what was the hard part there?" type bonuses in all categories (the Rodney King riot bonus, for example), but yeah, I agree that it avoided the easy/easy/IMPOSSIBLE construction and generally seemed to play fair.

Also, I have no idea what "consensus" was reached about people not editing things--seems dumb to me.

[at your pleasure]

Could we have a breakdown of the Other Arts?

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Also, I was logged on to the IRC chat room for a little bit the night after this tournament, and evidently there was some consensus that I should keep away from editing science for a while. As it happens, I will be working on MUT 2013 and probably not much after that. So, the first comment doesn't really help me much. If anyone who shared that sentiment would care to let me know what I should work on between now and MUT, I'd appreciate it (I'm getting this from Eric in the other thread, but if anyone else wants to chime in that'd be great too).

Also, I have no idea what "consensus" was reached about people not editing things--seems dumb to me.

In case anyone is wondering what's going on here, I made an ill-advised comment yesterday outside the forums, trying to channel the feelings of other people involved in the games I played. Turns out I did so wrongly. I am all in favor of there being as many good science editors in the game as possible and definitely don't want you (Gaurav) to think your contributions to the game are unwanted or deficient. I personally don't have the right to personally tell any science editor how well they did, since I know so little about science, so I probably shouldn't have tried to summarize anyone else's more educated opinion on the matter rather than letting them speak their own minds. I'm sorry for being an idiot, and hope that the good feedback on this set helps you with future work.

[Sima Guang Hater]

I want to reiterate in the strongest possible terms that I thought Gaurav did a very good job with the science in this set, and that my only quibbles with the bio and chem are the occasional misplaced clue and/or inadequately expanded answerline.

[Muriel Axon]

At times, I tried to write on science answers that I thought would not go dead. This resulted in the tossups on DNA sequencing (with high throughput clues, which may have had a somewhat unfortunate cliff at the giveaway), multinucleate cells, the mitochondrial genome, etc. I wonder what people thought of these ideas and their execution?

I thought the DNA sequencing question worked well enough until the point I buzzed (which was around SOLiD). Obviously I didn't hear the purported cliff, but the early clues were good. The mitochondrial genome was a bit more confusing, but I think the early clues did a good job of establishing context nevertheless. I appreciate the attempt to write bio/chem questions on accessible answer lines while preserving the difficulty; I don't think that effort entirely succeeded, but it was a step in the right direction.

Like Eric and Matt said, the bio/chem was fine, and at no point during the day did I ever get frustrated about the quality of bio and chem in general.

[Muriel Axon]

Was this set ever posted? I don't know if it wasn't or if I'm just stupid/can't find things.

[theMoMA]

Was this set ever posted? I don't know if it wasn't or if I'm just stupid/can't find things.

I thought I sent it to be posted, but I'll upload it to the database sometime soon if it's not on there.

[theMoMA]

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/questionsets/661/

Packets will be available when confirmed by the administrator.